Roger is a long-standing member of the POWERLAB community. He is a passionate marathon runner himself, a triathlete at times and has set up his own running event. In this interview, he tells us how all this is connected to distance measurement and football.
PL: Hello Roger, great that you have time for an interview.We know each other, but who are you?
Roger:I'm a sports-loving mathematician who discovered running at the age of 11 and later endurance sports in general. I have now been running for 37 years. Over the years, I have worked on numerous projects related to my hobbies of sport and mathematics: the Zurich New Year's Marathon, running and swimming time calculations, team leader of the multi-winning Brown walkers at the SOLA relay, running training manager at the ASVZ (Academic Sports Association of Zurich), qualification for and participation in the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Clearwater/Florida, football probability calculations for national and international media, and even the development of a risk management tool for coaches in professional football. And the best and most important "project" is of course my family with my three wives (wife + 2 daughters).
Roger:I am someone who likes to develop and implement my own ideas - ideally together with other people who are enthusiastic about these ideas. A typical example of this is the New Year's Marathon Zurich, which I initiated to add a unique event to the Swiss running scene. The New Year's marathon is unique because it starts exactly at the turn of the year and the winners automatically run a world best time for the year, which is recognized by World Athletics. There is also the impressive experience of running into the New Year with like-minded people under the firework sky.
It is no coincidence that the start time of the New Year's marathon is set so that this event is the first marathon of the year worldwide: as a mathematician who deals with extreme events (major loss events for insurance companies) in his profession, it is obvious that a run initiated by me should be unique or optimized in a certain sense.
The unifying element of my projects is the combination of mathematics and sport. And of course I don't want to miss out on the fun either.
PL: In addition to your job, you are also a course measurer, tell us how that came about?
Roger: In order for the times run at the New Year's Marathon to be internationally valid, the course must be officially measured. When we ran the New Year's Marathon for the first time, there was no international course measurer in Switzerland. One option would have been to have a foreign measurer flown in. At the same time, however, I came across the international regulations for course measurements and read through them out of curiosity. As a mathematician who had done his military service as a surveyor in the artillery, I didn't see any great difficulty in carrying out such a route survey myself; all the specifications sounded intuitively logical to me. So I passed the necessary course surveyor exams and since then I have been involved whenever a running course needs to be surveyed internationally in Switzerland. I was also used as a course measurer at the 2014 European Championships in Zurich and 2022 in Munich, as well as for the 2021 half marathon world record in Lisbon. The crowning glory would be to be allowed to measure an Olympic marathon. In the surveying scene, it's comparable to being allowed to referee the World Cup final.
PL: What many people may not know is that you are also a popular source in the Swiss media when it comes to football and the World Cup - how did that come about?
Roger:As a 16-year-old, I won a computer in a competition; at that time, it was not yet common to own a computer and the internet was not yet on everyone's lips. However, the Atari computer I won had a programming language installed on it, which I taught myself. I started developing games and distributing them among my colleagues. At the same time, I also made my first probability calculations in football, initially for individual games and later for entire championships. Thanks to my website at the time, on which I presented these calculations, various media outlets became aware of me and my calculations. I became the "in-house mathematician" for various newspapers, especially during the World and European Championships, and was also invited as a guest on radio and TV programs from time to time.
PL: You are known in the running scene for making the most accurate running time calculations, regardless of the distance and regardless of the runner? How does that work?
Roger:If you look at a runner's best times for different distances, the same pattern always emerges: the percentage drop in performance (measured as time per kilometer) is the same if you increase the distance by the same factor, e.g. from 1 km to 2 km, or from 5 km to 10 km, etc. The altitude difference can also be calculated as a simple percentage. The altitude meters can also be easily converted into additional meters (altitude meters up) or shortening of the distance (altitude meters down). If you combine all this, you can estimate a runner's basic speed, fatigue and speed up and down hills from past running competitions and thus determine, for example, the ideal pace for a marathon for this person. Thanks to such a calculation, I myself managed to run a 2:46 marathon (both halves in 1:23), running at the right pace from the first kilometer onwards and keeping it up until the finish line. could. The 2:46 was definitely the maximum that was possible in that race, and without my own calculation tool I wouldn't have been able to exploit this potential.
PL: What is your best running or competition experience?Tell us about it?
Roger:Achieving the best time in the marathon was very nice. However, the Ironman 70.3 European Championship in Wiesbaden was even more impressive; on the one hand because I was able to run the final half marathon in a time of 1:25, which was a proud achievement for me, but above all because both my wife Nicole and I were able to qualify for the World Championships in Clearwater with our performance. However, the most unforgettable running experience I had was in South Africa: My wife and I took part as a team in the first edition of a 4-day running adventure across usually inaccessible nature reserves. Between the stages, we spent the night at a campsite and sat together with the other runners. We were practically the only exotic runners among all the South African participants, but we were fully integrated into this sporty South African community right from the start. The nature and the encounters with the South African people are still unforgettable today, even though it was over a decade ago.
PL: Do you have an unfulfilled dream or project and would you tell us about it?
Roger:There is indeed a project. I still don't know whether it's feasible: since Eliud Kipchoge's sub-2-hour marathon at the latest, many people have probably realized that there are more and less suitable running routes for running fast times. For world records, for example, it is regulated how much higher the start may be compared to the finish (42 meters in altitude) and that the start and finish may not be more than 21.1 km apart in air distance. In contrast to sprints on the tartan track, however, there are no specifications as to how strong the tailwind may be. In order to be able to offer the fastest possible marathon course, I think it would make sense to take this aspect into account. I am convinced that somewhere in the world (possibly even in Switzerland) there is a more or less flat course, half of which is sheltered from the wind in strong winds (for example by running through a forest or along a wind-protected embankment) and the other half of which benefits from a tailwind. I would love to offer a "tailwind marathon" on such a route. I am convinced that not only Kipchoge could run the marathon course in under 2 hours in this way. If anyone has any tips on where to find such a route, please feel free to contact me.
PL: Thank you for the interview.
